Charging Issue Last Night

[mreynolds767]

Puzzled as to what just happened...

I plugged my car in last night (Telsa Wall Connector 48 AMPs in my garage) as I typically do during the week.
My car is set to start charging at 3:30 AM and my in car meter/limit is set to charge to approx. 88%
It finishes an hour or so before I leave the house typically.

I usually do 80% but yesterday and today have more driving than usual and is cold out so made sure I was past 80 just below 90%. Day before (yesterday's drive) no issues it charged to 88% or so.
This morning as I pull into work I looked and saw I have 88 miles of range remaining and have more than that to drive later today.
AWD car, by checking the consumption log I see my car started at 50% charge and is now at 29% charge.
( I rarely look at my meter cause with home charging it is really not an issue for non-trip driving)

Last night I returned the car to the garage at 30% so somehow my car charged itself overnight from 30 - 50% ???
I double checked the limit/line in the car, it is set to just shy of 90%
Checked my phone as I usually get a notification each morning say my car is charged, this morning no notification.
We did not lose power overnight or anything weird like that.

If the car did not charge at all that would be one thing ; but my car did charge a little bit which just makes it very puzzling and scary???
Any idea what might have happened?
Can only come up with maybe the in car voltage was lower than 48 ; if that is it just a setting or something wrong with my house electricity?
I have never not had it charge at 48 AMP before at home and never had anything like this happen before.

Really screws up my day as I now have to visit a supercharger location at some point on my way home after a couple client meetings today.

 

[pdp1]

I have no idea if what I'm about to tell you is your case, but I had something similar happen to me. It turned out that the 14-50 outlet I was plugging my mobile connector into has some connection issues. My mobile connector would usually work and either stop randomly before reaching my set charge limit or sometimes not start at all. It only happened maybe once or at most twice a week. If I ever caught it in its act, I would unplug the mobile connector from the 14-50 outlet and plugged it back in, and it resumed charging fine. After I replaced the 14-50 outlet, this never happened again.

Anyway, I know you're not using a mobile connector, but my point is maybe there is some connection issue in your wall connector or wiring to your wall connector. Good luck debugging this!

 

[mreynolds767]

I have no idea if what I'm about to tell you is your case, but I had something similar happen to me. It turned out that the 14-50 outlet I was plugging my mobile connector into has some connection issues. My mobile connector would usually work and either stop randomly before reaching my set charge limit or sometimes not start at all. It only happened maybe once or at most twice a week. If I ever caught it in its act, I would unplug the mobile connector from the 14-50 outlet and plugged it back in, and it resumed charging fine. After I replaced the 14-50 outlet, this never happened again.

Anyway, I know you're not using a mobile connector, but my point is maybe there is some connection issue in your wall connector or wiring to your wall connector. Good luck debugging this!

Thanks for the reply
I hope that is not the issue.
Obviously it could be but the unit is hard wired into the wall, on a dedicated circuit and the job done by an electrician so should not be having such issues and is not something I could fix myself.

 

[brkaus]

Assuming you have not messed with anything since. When you are sitting in your home parking place with nothing plugged in, what is the charge rate setting at? It should list some number of Amps. When you plug in, does it stay the same? If it is reduced, the circuit could have been detected as a problem.

Where are you located? Is it cold? Any chance a door was left open or something that would have kept the heat on all night?

 

[srs5694]

This is a case where a data-logging service like TeslaFi or some third-party Tesla apps might be helpful. Using these tools, you can check to see when charging actually started, when it stopped, at what voltage and amperage the car charged, etc. This information might be very helpful in figuring out what happened. In the absence of those tools, you can check your app periodically during the charge period -- but with your scheduled charging setup, that will be extremely inconvenient. Thus, you might want to disable scheduled charging for at least one night so you can monitor what's happening, and correct it if something goes wrong. You could also call Tesla to ask what happened. I don't know how long they keep logs from each car, but assuming they've still got the logs for your trouble charging session, they may be able to tell what happened.

One thing I've noticed recently is that for the first few minutes of some recent charging sessions, I've been getting very poor charge rates (~10-15 mph charging on 30-30A EVSEs that normally produce 25-30 mph). After 10 or 20 minutes, the charge rate goes up to what I'd expect. The culprit seems to be battery conditioning because of the cold weather. You mention you've got a garage, so I'd expect the temperature to be less of an issue for you, but if it's an unheated garage, this could be part of your problem, although I'm skeptical that it's the whole of the problem.

 

[mreynolds767]

Assuming you have not messed with anything since. When you are sitting in your home parking place with nothing plugged in, what is the charge rate setting at? It should list some number of Amps. When you plug in, does it stay the same? If it is reduced, the circuit could have been detected as a problem.

Where are you located? Is it cold? Any chance a door was left open or something that would have kept the heat on all night?

Will definitely check that tonight when I get back home. For today, I can stop at a Supercharger to get me through the day and hope it does not happen again.

Car was in an enclosed garage last night, so not too cold. Probably was low 50's inside the garage last night if I had to guess.
Know it was not a heat related drain as 15 min before I left this morning I did go to my phone app and turned the cabin heat on (so know it was off).
I should have seen I was only 50% charged this morning but now conditioned to not ever think about range gauge unless going on a trip ; is something I look at much less than a gas gauge on an ICE vehicle.

 

[Rocky_H]

Even without those specific 3rd party monitoring tools, I think it's a good idea for people to at least turn on the notification in the mobile app for "charging interrupted". There are separate notification settings for "charging started", "charging complete", and "charging interrupted". I really don't care to get useless notifications on my phone every time it charges normally, but that last one, I would like to know about. So that can show you if it prematurely shut off charging for some reason and when.

 

[mreynolds767]

This is a case where a data-logging service like TeslaFi or some third-party Tesla apps might be helpful. Using these tools, you can check to see when charging actually started, when it stopped, at what voltage and amperage the car charged, etc. This information might be very helpful in figuring out what happened. In the absence of those tools, you can check your app periodically during the charge period -- but with your scheduled charging setup, that will be extremely inconvenient. Thus, you might want to disable scheduled charging for at least one night so you can monitor what's happening, and correct it if something goes wrong. You could also call Tesla to ask what happened. I don't know how long they keep logs from each car, but assuming they've still got the logs for your trouble charging session, they may be able to tell what happened.

One thing I've noticed recently is that for the first few minutes of some recent charging sessions, I've been getting very poor charge rates (~10-15 mph charging on 30-30A EVSEs that normally produce 25-30 mph). After 10 or 20 minutes, the charge rate goes up to what I'd expect. The culprit seems to be battery conditioning because of the cold weather. You mention you've got a garage, so I'd expect the temperature to be less of an issue for you, but if it's an unheated garage, this could be part of your problem, although I'm skeptical that it's the whole of the problem.

Yeah ; I don't have any of the 3rd party services like Telsa Fi or even Stats. I should probably get the Stats app for Ios, as you mentioned that would help diagnose.
Tonight when I get home, I will plan on turning off the scheduled charging and watching it for a bit to make sure it is behaving normal and charging at 48 AMPS.

Garage is unheated but has not been that cold and is an attached garage so I am sure gets some residual heat from the house. I doubt it got cold enough in the garage last night to cause any issues.

I suspect it was receiving lower Amps ; hoping somehow the in car amp meter just reset itself to a lower number and is not a wiring / circuit power issue in my case.

 

[mreynolds767]

Even without those specific 3rd party monitoring tools, I think it's a good idea for people to at least turn on the notification in the mobile app for "charging interrupted". There are separate notification settings for "charging started", "charging complete", and "charging interrupted". I really don't care to get useless notifications on my phone every time it charges normally, but that last one, I would like to know about. So that can show you if it prematurely shut off charging for some reason and when.

Just checked and I do have that box checked and did not receive any notifications on Interruption ; so I guess that rules out any sort of power interruption.
When power has gone out temp in the past overnight , I do recall getting those type of notifications.
I have Charging Interrupted checked and Charging Completed checked. I do not have Charging Started checked.

More and more looks like it is an AMP issue so unclear what happened for that to be lowered as the car seemed to charge as it normally would be didn't finish charging as it was getting a low number of amps and I had it set to start at 3:30 AM ; only giving it 5 hours before I left the house.

 

[mtndrew1]

Same issue here but with an additional quirk.

Got home last night, plugged in the car, and the EVSE cycled about 8 times in 30 second intervals. It would cycle off then immediately back on (my EVSE contactor clunks loudly) so I watched it and took a video.

This morning the car was not charged. Not sure if they’re related but this is the second time the car hasn’t charged since 2019.36.x.

I’ll bring it up at an unrelated service visit tomorrow. Very irritating and inconvenient.

 

[mreynolds767]

Same issue here but with an additional quirk.

Got home last night, plugged in the car, and the EVSE cycled about 8 times in 30 second intervals. It would cycle off then immediately back on (my EVSE contactor clunks loudly) so I watched it and took a video.

This morning the car was not charged. Not sure if they’re related but this is the second time the car hasn’t charged since 2019.36.x.

I’ll bring it up at an unrelated service visit tomorrow. Very irritating and inconvenient.

Now that you mention it, I do recall hearing a strange sound last night in the garage shortly after plugging the wall connector in that seemed to originate from the wall unit.
Didn't think much of it and closed the door and forget about it since never had an issue prior like this.

 

[mtndrew1]

Now that you mention it, I do recall hearing a strange sound last night in the garage shortly after plugging the wall connector in that seemed to originate from the wall unit.
Didn't think much of it and closed the door and forget about it since never had an issue prior like this.

I only noticed mine because my kitchen is directly above the garage and I could hear it clunking on and off while I was preparing dinner. I checked on it shortly after but everything looked normal.

Last night I happened to be working in the garage and got to watch it cycling like crazy firsthand. Super weird and probably not great for my EVSE.

 

[mreynolds767]

Just updating my own thread.
Last night, when I plugged in my car I made sure the voltage was 48 AMP and started charging immediately after plugging in, instead of the scheduled timing.
Everything worked perfectly normal ; no issues.

Still unclear what happened but believe it was somehow the voltage inside the car reset itself to 5 AMP
Something I need to watch over from now on I guess to make sure that does not happen.

Will try tonight with the scheduled charging.
Don't have to drive much tomorrow so not a big deal if it does not charge much.

 

[brkaus]

Still unclear what happened but believe it was somehow the voltage inside the car reset itself to 5 AMP
Something I need to watch over from now on I guess to make sure that does not happen.

Mine jumped all over the first time I tried scheduled departure. I was seeing 6a and 11a for some reason. Setting it to off/reboot/reset scheduled departure fixed for me. Hope it works for you!

 

[Rocky_H]

maybe the in car voltage was lower than 48

I made sure the voltage was 48 AMP

Still not a thing.
Amps are a measure of current, not voltage. Volts are the unit for voltage.

 

[mreynolds767]

Still not a thing.
Amps are a measure of current, not voltage. Volts are the unit for voltage.

I think us non-electricians understand what I am talking about.

 

[zoltarp]

What was the take away from this saga? Mine started charging around 9pm last night on a 30a circuit and unlike any time before wasn't done this morning. I had it set to 80% and it took several hours to get there after I came out and found it was still "charging". I don't believe it was actually charging this morning, so I unplugged the connector plugged it back in and checked the charger it showed it had power, only then did it show it was pulling amps on the app.

p.s running v11.0 (2022.8.10.5)